Celebrating an unbelievable thirty years, pioneering cross-genre act Asian Dub Foundation have put something rather special together. Titled 94–Now: Collaborations, it gathers ten tracks from across the band’s extensive back catalogue, and a new track produced specially for the compilation.
As the title implies, each track features a guest artist, whether adding vocals or providing a remix, allowing ADF to expand their sonic palette ever further in the process. And this is really the most notable aspect of the thing. All too often, collaborations are the result of a board room meeting, with the inevitable result that a guest simply shows up and does what they’re told in order to boost the respective profile of both parties. Here, however, each collaboration is the result of a genuine mutual respect, and each piece flows organically, with neither party asserting dominance over the other. It results in a selection of some of the most innovative and forward-thinking pieces in the ADF catalogue, and it was inspired to bring them together in one package.
The package
Clad in a simple black sleeve, the artist name and title is printed in white, while the addition of a spot varnish ADF logo is barely visible. It makes for a striking addition to your collection, looking sleek and lethal. A hype sticker reminds us that this is a celebration of the band’s thirty years so far, and the record is packaged in a printed liner that provides detailed notes on each track.
The disc itself is pressed on pristine, heavyweight black vinyl and all the tracks were remastered specially for this release, meaning that this sounds absolutely fantastic throughout.
The audio
Compilations spanning such a period of time often suffer from significant sonic differences, but 94 – Now: Collaborations benefits both from the band’s immense studio nous, and an impressive mastering job that brings the pieces together into an album that rivals Smashing Pumpkins’ Pisces Iscariot in terms of cohesion. To let the needle hit the groove is to drift away under the spell of ADF’s near-miraculous soundscapes, and all the tracks here, whether covers or original pieces, have a majestic force of their own.
Opening the record, we get a gem from ADF’s 2008 Punkara album – a blazing cover of Stooges’ classic No Fun featuring the song’s original agent provocateur, Iggy Pop. While, at first glance, Iggy may not be the likeliest collaborator for ADF, there’s no question that the band share his punk ethos. Iggy, meanwhile, has oft dabbled in a range of music, lending his voice to the likes of Death In Vegas when not unleashing hell with his own band, and the pairing turns out to be inspired. Mixing Bhangra rhythms with Chandrasonic’s sheet metal guitar, ADF take this well-worn song into a new realm, while Iggy attacks the vocals with typical panache, but also with a sensitivity to the new backing. As such, it’s as much a statement of intent as an album opener, and it certainly gets this compilation off to a ferocious start.
It’s followed by surprise number one single Comin’ Over Here, which saw Chandrasonic welding Stewart Lee’s thunderous, anti-racist polemic to a blistering backing track, and finding a necessary nugget of humour amidst the bleakness of Brexit in the process. Released to coincide with the end of the Brexit transition, time has hardly dulled its fury, and, with the recent racist riots, the song’s underlying message is as pertinent now is at was at point of release. Appropriately, given the subject matter, it’s followed by a new piece, Broken Britain,which was recorded with a young MC by the name of Chowerman. Reflecting upon the deeply divisive election held earlier this year, it sees ADF return to their community music roots to deliver a track as vital and vibrant as anything they’ve yet released. Chowerman, meanwhile, marks himself out as a serious talent, and the collaboration packs a real punch thanks to his deftly delivered and incisive lyrics.
Drawn from the stunning Enemy Of The Enemy album, 1000 Mirrors is a beautiful piece of music, that has gained further poignancy in the wake of Sinead O’Connor’s tragic passing. A harrowing tale of domestic abuse, Adrian Sherwood weaves Sinead’s heart-rending performance between sublime dub elements to create a piece of art that cannot fail but rend your heart. One of the band’s most unique and heartfelt tracks, it was a highlight of its parent album, and it remains a highlight here. It’s followed by a deeper cut from the band’s catalogue. Originally a bonus track included on the Japanese version of the same album, Raj Antique Storefinds ADF (alongside Dry and Heavy) in a trip hop mood, the somnolent beat paired with a range of atypical instruments including sitars and tablas. Then, at the song’s core, a brilliant vocal from Likkle Mai that brings this “archaeological love song” to life. It rounds out a first side that takes us from the punked up fury of The Stooges to dreamier pastures, all the time sounding like a single, coherent album, rather than a representation of the band’s history.
Opening side 2, Taa Deem (taken from 2000’s Community Music), sees ADF teaming up with Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan for a hypnotic piece that draws the threads of dub reggae, punk, jungle, and Qawwali (Sufi devotional music) together. The results, even some twenty-four years after it was first tracked, are as fresh and innovative as anything you’re likely to hear today, the band clearly fired up to be working with their musical hero, and it sets a high bar for the second side. Recorded around the time of Raafi’s Revenge, Culture Move is a straight-up jungle monster, driven by the interplay between Deeder and MC Navigator. With the two MCs wrapping each other up in rhymes over a pulsing backdrop, it effortlessly gets the adrenalin flowing. As does another track from that era – the vibrant Free Satpal Ram – here remixed by Primal Scream and Brendan Lynch to gain additional punkish urgency. Drawing attention to the case of Satpal Ram, jailed for trying to defend his life during a racist attack, you can still feel the rage inspired by an unequal system pumping through the nervy rhythms. Breakbeats abound on Toulouse, a collaboration with French band Zebda that sees Chandrasonic remixing a track originally found on their 1995 album Le bruit et l’odeur. Known both for their activism and their wide-ranging music, Zebda and ADF toured together regularly, and they complement one another perfectly.
A most welcome addition to the set is a very special moment in ADF history, when the band found themselves joined live on stage by the legendary Chuck D. Here, Chuck spits out the lyrics to Black Steel In The Hour Of Chaos over a thunderous, industrially charged backdrop that breathes new life into an incredible song. It’s one of those moments in a band’s history where you’d not necessarily imagine the track taking this form but, having done so, it sounds like it was always meant to be that way. As to the recording, the sound quality may not quite be up to the standard found elsewhere, but you can feel the raw power and communal spirt flowing through the artists as they tackle the track together. Closing the album, we return to Community Music forCollective Mode – a track that features Japanese dubsters Audio Active for a chilled-out track that wraps things up nicely. Once again, it’s a collaboration in the genuine sense of the word, with both artists offering something to the mix, resulting in one last genuinely innovative piece of music for the record.
Conclusion
Where such compilations all too often appear as an epitaph, this thrilling collection highlights just how forward thinking ADF were from their inception, just how far that vision has taken them in the past thirty years, and just how far they could still go. Beautifully mastered, the album flows as if it was pre-planned, and it is a pleasure to allow yourself to become lost amidst its myriad twists and turns. A genuine collective, capable of adjusting their musical parameters to welcome any incoming artist, Asian Dub Foundation are a unique entity, and 94-Now: Collaborations stands as a testament to their ethos of inclusivity. 9.5/10
